


Tsubame ni Naru Toki (燕になるとき)

by Hokuto



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Metamorphoses - Ovid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animal Transformation, Character of Color, F/M, Haiku, Japan, Mythology - Freeform, Poetry, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When I become the swallow."<br/>Procne, Philomela, and Tereus in modern Japan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tsubame ni Naru Toki (燕になるとき)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lnhammer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/gifts).



> I saw this prompt for Yuletide madness and could not resist for even a moment! I hope you enjoy - and count haiku as decent verse (I'm pretty rusty at them, though)...

She sits in her home,  
waiting for red sunset to  
bring her husband back.

She has made for him  
tea, hot and green as fresh leaves,  
and fixed his dinner.

"Ko, darling," she says,  
"when the sakura bloom my  
sister starts college.

"I have missed her, and  
we have a spare room where she  
might stay, while she's here…"

"Dear wife, Tsubame,"  
he says, "a splendid idea -  
would I had thought it!

"Let it be so." And  
in the spring he carries her  
bags as she moves in.

How happy, the sisters united!

But as cicadas  
sing in the trees, tragedy;  
in the summer heat

at dusk she comes home  
weeping, bloody, and silent,  
her tongue torn from her.

Tsubame begs her,  
"Write his name, his face, his height,  
we will find this filth,

"we will punish him!"  
Sasako writes only "No,"  
over and over,

jagged, the ink black  
as reeds against a winter  
sky on the paper.

Her belly swells, a  
heavy moon; that Ko, so kind,  
he pays all her bills.

The hospital asks them no questions.

For their great kindness  
she sews for them kimono,  
of her own design;

on the sleeves of one  
an injured songbird among  
willows, the other

displays a demon  
with striped wings and long nose and  
bitter bloody claws.

"So lovely," Ko says,  
"we will wear them every  
day;" Tsubame holds

the sleeves up to each  
other, watching the willow  
leaves mesh together.

The swaying branches, a perfect fit.

When the sakura  
bloom again her son is born,  
a lovely pale boy

with a big nose and  
soft downy hair like a chick's.  
_My little hatchling_

writes his mother, but  
she gives him no name, will not  
write of his father.

Kotengu holds  
him, sings him songs, promises  
him the moon and stars;

Tsubame looks at  
Sasako, shares a smile  
with a knife in it.

When the plum blossoms  
fall the boy is gone as if  
he were never born;

the women weep spring  
rain, warm and empty tears, as  
Ko looks for the boy,

finds no sign of him.  
How sweet and tender the meat  
his wife cooks that night,

a consolation  
feast for his fruitless searching.  
They eat only rice.

_Adopted_, writes Sasako.

In the dark he comes  
to her, begging, desperate  
to know of his son;

long nose pressed against  
her cheek, a silver knife in  
his hand cutting deep.

Under him she weeps,  
her face burns with salt and blood,  
but she writes nothing.

His hands redden like  
a white flower soaking up  
her draining life, each

cut deeper, deeper,  
deadly. He leaves the knife in  
her cold loose fingers.

In her kitchen sits  
Tsubame; she brushes dark  
feathers from her hair

and laughs at her king,  
waiting for him to realize  
where his son has gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Tsubame (swallow) was the easiest of these three to name; poor Itys never gets one in this version, alas. Hoopoes not being native to Japan, it was easiest to make Tereus a kotengu - a lesser tengu, a type of [notoriously arrogant youkai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengu). Philomela was also difficult, until by luck I stumbled into a Wiki article on the Japanese bush-warbler - not a nightingale proper, but similarly renowned for their song. _Sasako_ is the specific term used in haiku of this bird, and they're associated with spring and with plum blossoms.
> 
> I do realize that which sister becomes the swallow and which one the nightingale is somewhat confused in the mythology; I prefer swallow!Procne and nightingale!Philomela myself, for linguistic reasons, but my apologies if you'd rather have them reversed.


End file.
